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While the stock market’s attention was fixed on the end-game one of its most disastrous floats of recent years, another continued to be dependably disappointing.

Shaft Sinkers, the splendidly named business that does the digging for miners, declined a further 13.6 per cent to 14¼p. Never cheaper, these were shares floated at 124p each in December 2010, when the now-defunct Arbuthnot Securities helped it to raise £30.6 million. The following April, those shares touched 192½p, valuing Shaft Sinkers at £91 million.

Since then — gripped by the malaise that has debilitated junior resources shares generally, and mired in controversy all of